Santana Minerals’ chief executive Damian Spring made the call in a submission to a government consultation about a Bill to amend recently-introduced fast-track legislation by the end of the year.
In support of the Bill, which plans to clamp down on existing opportunities for communities to comment, Mr Spring’s submission called for the scrapping of a clause that says panels considering fast-track applications can hear from anyone considered "appropriate".
If the clause - in section 53 of the Act - is scrapped, iwi and adjacent landowners would still be eligible to be heard, plus local councils.
However, other interested parties and experts would be excluded, including residents, expert locals and community groups such as Sustainable Tarras.
Local and national organisations with expertise, such as the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) and the Central Otago Environmental Society, would also be left out.
Mr Spring said, in his consultation response, that the fast-track legislation had been established to prioritise timely delivery of eligible projects and had an intent "to limit the opportunity for involvement in the comment process".
In practice, the legislation’s purpose had been "undermined" by fast-track panels inviting many people to comment, he said.
Sustainable Tarras chairwoman Suze Keith said Mr Spring’s effort to remove the clause was "outrageous" and an attempt to "water down a process already enormously in his favour by framing local involvement as a hindrance rather than a help."
"Mr Spring perpetuates the view that if you live locally, you mustn’t have any expertise.
"We’re surprised he hasn’t come upon the ecologists, miners, economists, tourism experts, geologists, water experts, archaeologists, landscape specialists, for example, that live in the Central Otago Lakes community. Why wouldn’t local comments be relevant, necessary and materially useful, especially when combined with hyper-local knowledge? We are gobsmacked why Mr Spring doesn’t welcome local expertise."
Ms Keith said deletion of the clause would put fast-track panels in a vulnerable position without information they need. Approved projects would have "escalated risk of environmental damage and negative social impact".
He said excluded people would include those living in the "firing line" close to the proposed mine site, such as around Thomson Gorge Rd.
"Just because someone doesn’t have an adjoining land title doesn’t mean they will not be affected."
Ms Keith said Santana had promised last year it wanted to engage in dialogue with interested people, including Sustainable Tarras, but had not.
Santana had refused to answer questions or share reports about its plans in advance of submitting its fast-track application.
"There was a pattern of behaviour of simply harvesting us for community concerns rather than providing information that we continued to ask for up until two weeks ago."
A Santana document dump, released as part of its fast-track application this month, was nearly 10,000 pages and the speed of the fast-track process would provide limited time for Sustainable Tarras’s expert advisers and others to digest it, she said.
Santana had "missed the opportunity to build social licence, relationships and get valuable inputs".
The government wants to push through its Fast-Track Amendment Bill by the end of this year, but EDS chief operating officer Shay Schlaepfer said it would make a "shocking law even worse" through "severely constraining" voices of communities and organisations.
The proposed amendments would also shift power away from panels considering fast-track projects’ impacts, including environmental impacts, by allowing a government policy statement to define projects as regionally or nationally important, she said.
When asked to comment on his submission to the Bill, Santana’s Mr Spring claimed his firm was "not opposing community input".
"We are reinforcing that any extra invitations for comment must be relevant, necessary and materially useful to the panel, not a return to a full Resource Management Act style process."
When asked to respond to this remark, Ms Keith said Santana Minerals’ submission explicitly stated that it wanted the clause removed that allowed other people to be heard.
Sustainable Tarras was "not sure if Mr Spring has read his submission".
